How to Delete Pages from a PDF (Free, Quick Methods)

You know that feeling when you download a 30-page PDF and the first 3 pages are a cover sheet, a blank page, and a table of contents you don't need? Or when you scan a stack of papers and accidentally include a receipt for lunch? You just want to rip those pages out and keep the rest.

With physical paper, you'd just pull the pages out. With a PDF, it's slightly more involved — but only slightly. Let me walk you through the options.

Why You Might Need to Remove Pages

The obvious cases:

• Scanned documents with mistakes. You scanned 20 pages but page 7 is blurry and page 14 is upside down. Delete the bad ones, rescan just those, and merge them back in.
• Sharing partial documents. Your client only needs chapters 3 and 4 of your report. Instead of sending the whole thing, remove everything else and send just what's relevant.
• Removing cover pages and filler. Many generated PDFs (reports, invoices, exports from software) include unnecessary pages — cover sheets, disclaimers, blank separators.
• Privacy. Maybe your PDF contains a page with personal information you don't want to share. Delete it before forwarding. (Though if it's really sensitive, also consider properly redacting it.)
• File size. Got a 50 MB PDF with 100 pages of high-res images, but you only need 10 of them? Deleting the other 90 pages will dramatically reduce the file size.

Method 1: PeacefulPDF (Browser-Based, Free)

PeacefulPDF's page deletion tool is straightforward. Open it, drop in your PDF, see thumbnails of all pages, select the ones you want to remove, and download the result. Everything happens locally in your browser — no server uploads.

I like this approach because seeing thumbnails of every page makes it really hard to accidentally delete the wrong one. Some tools just ask you to type in page numbers ("delete pages 3, 7, 12-15") and you're basically guessing. With thumbnails, you can actually see what you're removing.

Steps:

1. Go to the Delete Pages tool
2. Upload your PDF
3. Click on the pages you want to remove (they'll be highlighted)
4. Confirm and download the cleaned-up PDF

Takes about 20 seconds. I just did it with a 150-page document and removed 40 pages. No hiccups.

Method 2: Preview on Mac

If you're on a Mac, Preview handles this natively and it's genuinely good at it.

1. Open the PDF in Preview
2. Show the sidebar (View → Thumbnails)
3. Click on the page you want to delete
4. Press the Delete key
5. Save

You can select multiple pages by holding Command and clicking, or select a range by clicking the first page, then Shift-clicking the last. Then hit Delete. All gone.

One important thing: Preview saves changes to the original file by default. If you want to keep the original intact, use File → Export as PDF to save a new copy before you start deleting pages. I learned this the hard way when I deleted pages from a contract and then realized I needed those pages later. Thankfully I had a backup, but that was pure luck.

Preview is my go-to for quick page deletions when I'm on my Mac. For anything more involved (or when I'm not on a Mac), I use a browser tool.

Method 3: Adobe Acrobat

Acrobat makes this easy. Open the PDF, go to the "Organize Pages" panel, and you get a nice thumbnail view of every page. Click on a page and hit the trash icon. Or select multiple pages and delete them all at once.

You can also drag pages to reorder them while you're at it, which is a nice bonus. Acrobat Reader (the free version) can't delete pages — you need Acrobat Pro (the paid version). Same $20/month story as always.

Method 4: Google Chrome (Surprising, Right?)

Here's a trick that not many people know about. You can use Chrome's built-in PDF viewer to remove pages:

1. Open the PDF in Chrome (drag it into a browser tab)
2. Click the Print button (or Ctrl/Cmd + P)
3. In the "Pages" field, type the pages you want to KEEP (e.g., "1-5, 8-20" to skip pages 6-7)
4. Set the destination to "Save as PDF"
5. Click Save

It's a bit of a workaround, but it works perfectly and doesn't require any extra tools. The downside is you have to think in terms of which pages to keep rather than which to delete. For a 100-page document where you want to remove page 47, you'd type "1-46, 48-100." Not the most elegant solution.

Also, Chrome's print-to-PDF sometimes slightly alters the formatting. Margins might shift a tiny bit, or embedded fonts might render differently. For most documents it's unnoticeable, but for pixel-perfect layouts, use a dedicated PDF tool instead.

Method 5: Command Line (pdftk)

For the terminal enthusiasts, pdftk (PDF Toolkit) is the classic choice:

pdftk input.pdf cat 1-5 8-end output cleaned.pdf

This keeps pages 1-5 and 8 through the end, effectively deleting pages 6 and 7. The syntax is intuitive once you get used to it. "Cat" means concatenate, and you just list the page ranges you want to keep.

pdftk is free, available on Linux, Mac (via Homebrew), and Windows. It's fast, reliable, and doesn't alter the PDF content at all — it just removes pages cleanly.

Deleting vs. Splitting: Know the Difference

Sometimes people say "delete pages" when they actually mean "split the PDF." Deleting removes pages and gives you one smaller PDF. Splitting divides a PDF into multiple separate files.

For example, if you have a 20-page PDF and you want pages 1-10 as one file and pages 11-20 as another, that's splitting. If you just want to remove pages 11-20 and keep the first 10 pages in one file, that's deleting.

Both are easy. Just make sure you're using the right tool for what you actually want.

Recovering Deleted Pages

"I deleted the wrong pages! Can I get them back?"

If you saved over the original file: probably not. PDF page deletion is destructive — once you save, the data is gone. This is why I always recommend working on a copy.

If you haven't saved yet: just close without saving and reopen the original. In Preview on Mac, you can use Edit → Undo (Cmd+Z) to undo page deletions before saving.

If you're using a browser tool like PeacefulPDF, the original file on your computer is never modified — you always download a new file. So the original is automatically preserved. This is actually one reason I prefer browser tools for this kind of task. Built-in safety net.

Dealing With Blank Pages

A special case that drives people nuts: random blank pages in a PDF. They show up when you export from Word, when you merge documents, or when someone's printer driver adds them for duplex printing reasons.

Removing blank pages manually is easy enough — just select them and delete. But if you have a 500-page document with blank pages scattered throughout, scrolling through to find them all is painful.

Some advanced tools can detect and remove blank pages automatically. If you're dealing with this regularly, it might be worth looking into a batch processing solution. For occasional use, just scroll through the thumbnails and click on the blank ones. It's tedious but effective.

What Happens to Links and Bookmarks?

Good question that most people don't think about. When you delete pages from a PDF, any internal links or bookmarks pointing to those pages will break. If page 5 has a link that says "see page 12" and you delete page 12, that link now points to nothing (or to the wrong page, which is arguably worse).

The table of contents is the biggest casualty. If your PDF has a clickable table of contents and you delete pages, the TOC links will be wrong. Not much you can do about this with most tools — you'd need to manually fix the links in Acrobat or recreate the TOC in the source document.

For simple documents without internal navigation, this isn't a concern. For complex documents with lots of cross-references, be careful about which pages you remove.

My Workflow

Here's what I actually do when I need to remove pages from a PDF:

1. Open the file in a tool that shows thumbnails (I use PeacefulPDF or Preview)
2. Scroll through and identify which pages need to go
3. Select them all
4. Delete and download/save the result
5. Open the result and do a quick scroll-through to make sure everything looks right

Step 5 is important. I've caught mistakes during that final check more times than I can count. Deleted one page too many, or missed a blank page that should have been removed. Always check your work.

Also — and I can't stress this enough — keep the original file until you're absolutely sure the edited version is correct. I rename the original to something like "report_ORIGINAL.pdf" and keep it around for at least a week. Storage is cheap. Redoing work is not.

Quick Summary

Deleting pages from a PDF is a five-minute task, tops. Here's the quick guide:

• Mac users: Preview handles it natively. Fast and free.
• Everyone else: Use a browser-based tool with thumbnail view.
• Privacy-sensitive documents: Use a local tool (no uploads).
• Power users: pdftk on the command line is fast and scriptable.
• Always keep the original until you've verified the result.

That's it. Go clean up those PDFs.